I haven't kept this up to date as well as I should have, so this may end up being a bit of a long post. This afternoon, I fired this bike up for the first time in 27 years. But before I get to that, let me back up and fill in the gaps since my last post.
Before removing the engine from the frame, we of course had to remove the carburetors. About 10 years or so ago on another old bike, I tried to go the down and dirty route of simply removing the bowls and jets from the carburetors, cleaning them up and reinstalling. That didn't work out so well so lesson learned, this time I completely rebuilt the carbs. I had been told not to separate the four units, but I felt that in order to really do the job right, I needed to work on one carb at a time. So I separated each carb, disassembled them one at a time and placed all of the parts in plastic bags that were labeled as to which carb it was 1 through 4. I also took a lot of pictures before separating the units. Here's a couple of pics in case someone else may need the reference sometime down the road.
I took plenty of photos in order to remind myself of where things went and how to route hoses, etc. Here's the bank with #1 removed.
I purchased a carburetor parts cleaner in a 1 gallon can at my local O'reilly's. This stuff sure isn't as potent as the stuff we used to soak Holley double pumpers and Rochester Quadrojets in way back in the 70's and 80's, but by letting the carbs soak for 24 hours or so, they came out clean as a whistle. Here's a before shot:
The rebuild is pretty straight forward as long as you mind where all of the orings go. I have a factory shop manual for this bike and that helps to identify which parts go where. That along with some of the pictures made this job a snap. The hardest part was waiting the 12-24 hours while each carburetor soaked in the carb cleaner. Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of the carbs after rebuilding, but here's a shot of them installed on the bike.
Since the carbs were done and I had polished and cleaned just about everything that I could find to clean and polish, it was time to reinstall the engine and try to get this thing up and running. So, my son came over this morning to help me stick the motor back in the frame. No real tricks here. The engine went in actually a little easier than it came out. Oh, I don't think I mentioned in earlier posts that we had a bit of trouble getting the engine out. We disconnected and removed the carbs, we disconnected the points, we pulled all of the wiring off, we took all the motor mount bolts out, but still we had trouble. After sweating for a while trying to get the engine out the right side of the frame, we realized that we had forgotten to remove the drive chain. Duh. Anyhow, the engine slipped right into the frame and into place with very little struggle.
Then it was time to install the carburetors. When pulling the carbs in preparations for removing the engine, I had seen a YouTube video showing a guy using a crowbar to pop the carbs loose from their boots. This is the method that I used to remove my carbs. I figured if they came off that easily, they should go back on with the same effort if I used the same method. I greased the inside of the boots up a little bit using a PTFE impregnated grease. I lined the carbs up and using the crow bar, popped them right back into place. From there, it was just a matter of installing all of the peripheral equipment.
I wasn't quite ready to install the fuel tank yet - I've been cleaning it out by soaking it with white vinegar. That method seems to have worked quite well, but it is not yet ready to put fuel through. So, I jerry rigged a funnel into a piece of tubing and then down into the carburetors. I filled the funnel with gasoline and let it sit for a few minutes to run down and fill the carburetor bowls. At this point, I would like to say that I just touched the starter button and away she went. I would like to say that, but it would be untrue. I pulled the choke, cranked the throttle a few times and hit the starter. Although the engine spit just a little bit, it refused to start. I used a can of starter fluid (I had not installed the air cleaner yet) and still no dice. I took #4 spark plug out and checked for spark. Although the spark was not terribly hot, it seemed me to be pretty normal for a non-electronic ignition. Reinstalled the plug and cranked it some more. Finally, finally, I started to get some response from this long dormant engine. It sputtered a bit, it back fired a little, it over ran the starter motor and then it roared to life! Very quickly, I was able to get it warm enough to idle. I do need to adjust the idle mixture screws on the carburetors. Right now, they are on the initial setting of - according to the book - lightly seated and then 1 1/4 turns out. There will be plenty of time for that later, but for now I am very happy to report that the engine runs perfectly. No undue noises, everything seems tight. No smoke at all. Oil pressure came right up while I was still cranking the engine. Everything really seems perfect. I could not be happier with it! I stuck the tank on at my son's request, just so we could take some pictures. Here's what we are looking at now. The tank still needs to be waxed and cleaned on the outside and the front turn signals and headlight need to be finished up. Other than that, there's not a whole lot left to get this thing on the road.
And just as a reminder as to what we started out with on August 20th:
I can't wait for my first ride!!
